Zitate von Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Geburtstag: 12. Oktober 1875
Todesdatum: 1. Dezember 1947
Andere Namen: Alexander Crowley, Ալիստեր Կրոուլի
Aleister Crowley [ˈælɪstə ˈkɹoʊli] war ein britischer Okkultist, Schriftsteller und Bergsteiger.
Crowley bezeichnete sich als den Antichrist und das Große Tier 666 und führte ein ausschweifendes Leben. Von 1898 bis 1900 war er Mitglied im Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, im Anschluss gründete er eigene Gesellschaften, die sich inhaltlich und formell an diesem Orden orientierten. 1904 verfasste er das Buch Liber AL vel Legis , das zur Leitschrift seiner neureligiösen Bewegung Thelema wurde. Crowleys Beschäftigung mit Sexualmagie brachte ihn in Kontakt mit dem Ordo Templi Orientis . Nach einem Aufenthalt in New York gründete er 1920 in Cefalù auf Sizilien die kurzlebige Abtei Thelema. 1925 übernahm er de facto die Leitung des O.T.O. 1935 schuf er das Thoth-Tarot.
Crowley beeinflusste die Geschichte diverser Geheimbünde und neureligiöser Orden und nahm mittelbar Einfluss auf den Wicca-Kult. Auch aufgrund seiner sexuell aufgeladenen Schriften erlangte Crowley in den 1970er Jahren eine große postume Popularität.
Zitate Aleister Crowley
„Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all.“
— Aleister Crowley, buch Diary of a Drug Fiend
Quelle: Diary of a Drug Fiend
„One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.“
— Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4
Quelle: Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4
„But exceed! exceed!“
— Aleister Crowley, buch The Book of the Law
II:70-71.
The Book of the Law (1904)
„Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.“
— Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice
Introduction.
Quelle: Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Kontext: Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.
(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take "magical weapons", pen, ink, and paper; I write "incantations" — these sentences — in the "magical language" ie, that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth "spirits", such as printers, publishers, booksellers and so forth and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this book is thus an act of Magick by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)
In one sense Magick may be defined as the name given to Science by the vulgar.
„The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.“
— Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4
Quelle: Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4
„We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige.“
— Aleister Crowley, buch Diary of a Drug Fiend
Quelle: Diary of a Drug Fiend
„Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one: Who am I, and what shall be the sign?“
— Aleister Crowley, buch The Book of the Law
I:26.
The Book of the Law (1904)
Kontext: Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one: Who am I, and what shall be the sign? So she answered him, bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body.
„Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler.“
Ch. 48.
Kontext: Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say "No." I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible. One may be wholeheartedly eager to do something which is as easy as falling off a log; and yet it is impossible.
„I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.“
— Aleister Crowley, buch Moonchild
Quelle: Moonchild
„The Magician must be wary in his use of his powers; he must make every act not only accord with his Will, but with the properties of his position at the time.“
Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Kontext: The Magician must be wary in his use of his powers; he must make every act not only accord with his Will, but with the properties of his position at the time. It might be my Will to reach the foot of a cliff; but the easiest way — also the speediest, most direct least obstructed, the way of minimum effort — would be simply to jump. I should have destroyed my Will in the act of fulfilling it, or what I mistook for it; for the True Will has no goal; its nature being To Go.
„These bigots are so inconsistent that I have never been able to follow the working of their minds“
Ch. 7.
Kontext: My mother was naturally a rather sensual type of woman and there is not doubt that sexual repression had driven her as nearly as possible to the borders of insanity.
My cousin Agnes had a house in Dorset Square. My mother took me to tea there one afternoon. A copy of Dr. Pascal was in the room. The word "Zola" caught my mother's eye and she made a verbal assault of hysterical fury upon her hostess. Both women shouted and screamed at each other simultaneously, amid floods of tears. Needless to say, my mother had never read a line of Zola — the name was simply a red rag to a cow.
This inconsistency, by the way, seems universal. I have known a printer object to set up "We gave them hell and Tommy", while passing unquestioned all sorts of things to which exception could quite reasonably be taken by narrow-minden imbeciles. The censor habitually passes what I, who am no puritan, consider nauseating filth, while refusing to license Oedipus Rex, which we are compelled to assimilate at school. The country is flooded with the nasty pornography of women writers, while there is an outcry against epoch-making masterpieces of philosophy like Jurgen. The salacious musical comedy goes its libidinous way rejoicing, while Ibsen and Bernard Shaw are on the black list. The fact is, of course, that the puritan has been turned by sexual repression into a sexual pervert and degenerate, so that he is insane on the subject.
„Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body.“
— Aleister Crowley, buch The Book of the Law
I:26.
The Book of the Law (1904)
Kontext: Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one: Who am I, and what shall be the sign? So she answered him, bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body.
„Yet he would be wrong in an infinite number of ways.“
Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Kontext: We know one thing only. Absolute existence, absolute motion, absolute direction, absolute simultaneity, absolute truth, all such ideas: they have not, and never can have, any real meaning. If a man in delirium tremens fell into the Hudson River, he might remember the proverb and clutch at an imaginary straw. Words such as "truth" are like that straw. Confusion of thought is concealed, and its impotence denied, by the invention. This paragraph opened with "We know": yet, questioned, "we" make haste to deny the possibility of possessing, or even of defining, knowledge. What could be more certain to a parabola-philosopher that he could be approached in two ways, and two only? It would be indeed little less that the whole body of his knowledge, implied in the theory of his definition of himself, and confirmed by every single experience. He could receive impressions only be meeting A, or being caught up by B. Yet he would be wrong in an infinite number of ways. There are therefore Aleph-Zero possibilities that at any moment a man may find himself totally transformed. And it may be that our present dazzled bewilderment is due to our recognition of the existence of a new dimension of thought, which seems so "inscrutably infinite" and "absurd" and "immoral," etc. — because we have not studied it long enough to appreciate that its laws are identical with our own, though extended to new conceptions.
